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Story of Progress Long has there been a general
belief that man is a being separated from God, even the belief that he
is a creature essentially sinful in nature, doomed to eternal
punishment unless redeemed. Man has considered himself to be an
individual struggling to eke out an existence; searching for happiness
through the turmoil of earthly life, while his God sits upon a throne
in some far-distant heaven. God has appeared quite indifferent to
man’s struggle, for He seems neither to intervene to prevent
disaster nor to assist any individual, but allows events to take their
due course. No longer need man accept these
old beliefs, for light is now shed upon the truth of man. The new
thought reveals that man is one with God. Since God
is All, then logically man is included within God and is one with Him
and with all creation. Man accepting himself as a son and heir of God
may learn to appropriate for his own use the attributes or inherencies
of God – His wisdom, love, knowledge, understanding, power,
life and joy. He may learn to use God-guidance, God-protection, and
God-peace if he chooses to avail himself of his birthright. This is the revelation that
Divine Science brings to mankind for his joy and happiness. There are
definite steps of growth and unfoldment necessary before the
realization of this wonderful truth of oneness can be fully ours. Be an earnest student; put into
thinking and practice all that you learn as you proceed, and be
expectant of results which formerly you would have thought
unbelievable. Chapter 3 God and Man are One And God
said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Genesis 1:26
Questions
to alert your thinking
In order to understand and
accept the truth concerning the reality of good and the unreality of
evil, it will be necessary to consider the source or beginning of all
that is. In order to reason aright we must determine the first and
originating cause. In the beginning God –
God the Uncreate, the perfect Mind, the only source, the omnipresent
Principle, the eternal Spirit – created. All is contained
within God, the
perfect Mind, the cause of all that is, the source of all form. God,
the Uncreate, creates. There is only god. God the Good, eternal and
changeless; God the Good, the source of all, perfect and good; God, the
beginning out of which were all things made which were made.
“And God saw everything that he had made, and , behold, it
was very good.” Genesis 1:31 Creation is the emanation of
life and substance from the one original Source which can only be the
infinite, omnipresent, eternal and changeless God. Creator being the
Source is therefore the substance of its creation, as the fountain is
the substance of its stream; as the tree is the source and substance of
its branches and fruit; as the bay is one with the ocean of which it is
an extension. The emanation of the life and
substance of God into creation must mean that the life and substance of
creation is as perfect as that of the Creator, God Himself. The essence
of all created things must, by logical reasoning, be eternal
Spirit-Substance and the idea of each created form must be held within
God-Mind in order to maintain existence. All creation is within the
Creator, or Source, before coming into form, for in the Invisible is
the eternal Idea of all that makes up creation, while in the visible is
the expression or living form of Idea. Reason tells us that it is
necessarily true that all living forms are included within
Omnipresence, since Omnipresence embraces ALL within itself. Creation is God in
Self-manifestation. Divine Science explains the law and order of
perfect God-Mind involving itself within creation, revealing itself in
form as nature and mankind. “I am the beginning and the end,
the first and the last.” Rev. 22:13 The universal Spirit, the
only life and substance is the beginning, the source. That which
emanates from this One is the end; it too is Spirit, for there is but
one presence, on life, and one substance. Creation is Spirit.
Everything begins and ends as Spirit. God is omnipresent Principle.
Principle is thus defined by Webster: “The source and origin,
that from which anything proceeds; the beginning, the first.”
It is first cause wherein we find the true nature of all things. Then
with God as our beginning our nature is decided by His. Divine Science has taught these
truths from the time of its founding; has taught that Spirit and
Substance are two aspects of the same reality, God. Divine Science has
always taught that Spirit expresses by means of substance; it has
always taught that so-called matter is pure divine energy manifested as
form; it repeatedly points out that Substance is Spirit. Divine Science feels a great
debt of gratitude to the present day natural scientists and physicists
for their discoveries which confirm the Divine Science position.
Eddington, Jeans, and Millikan are out-spoken in their declaration that
what has been called “solid matter” is in fact more
space than solid and is very much alive since it consists of charges of
energy vibrating about a central charge, like planets around a central
sun. Many scientists state further that everything they have found
points to the truth that “the universe is a great
thought,” and that the stuff of which it is made is
Mind-Stuff. It is with the assurance of
confident knowing that Divine Science teaches the concept of God as
Universal Mind and man as a thought in that eternal Mind. It
confidently affirms the following conclusions:
Man then is eternally one with
the infinite Source and in nature is the image and likeness of the
Eternal as it expresses in living form. This is the truth of which
Jesus was fully conscious for he declared, “I and my Father
are one.” John 10:30 There is but one source of all, God. Man
is one with God, hence he is like God. That which begins in Spirit is
Spirit to the end. Since all that is has its source in Spirit, we can
confidently say, “All is Spirit.” God and man
cannot be separated. God is Spirit Universal and is expressed and
manifest as living soul and body. Spirit contains within itself all
souls and bodies before they are expressed, just as the vine hold
branches and fruit within itself before they are expressed or pressed
out. All of man’s
possibilities lie in the truth that is divine as is his Creator with
whom he is one. He is one with God whose nature is love, wisdom,
knowledge, understanding, power, life and joy. These are known as the
inherencies of God, and they are the attributes which man inherits by
nature of his oneness with God. Man is one with God who is omnipresent,
omnipotent, and omniscient. Think deeply of this. Concentrated thinking upon the
broadness of this thought brings out some degree of God’s
infinitude, some idea of the fullness that is all in all. Try as we
may, enlarge our thought of it as much as we possibly can, we can
scarcely comprehend the fullness and infinitude of God. To illumine
this idea and to start the stretching of our thinking, let us place
before each of the inherencies of God the word, infinite,
and after the word, omnipresent, in this way: Infinite Love, omnipresent Infinite Wisdom, omnipresent Infinite Knowledge, omnipresent Infinite Understanding,
omnipresent Infinite Power, omnipresent Infinite Life, omnipresent Infinite Joy, omnipresent As words, these may be read off
glibly, but to think deeply on each one opens man’s
consciousness to a new realization of his Source and of his own
potentialities. There is only one Mind, one
Substance, one Source, one Presence, one Power, one Life –
All Good. Although Truth is omnipresent and changeless; although man
lives, moves, and has his being in God, the All Good; although he
dwells in the kingdom of heaven, if he is not conscious of it, he may
go on his way lacking many things and losing the blessedness that IS
his. “Heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ,” men
may, through ignorance of the truth, be slaves of misery, doubt, and
poverty. It is KNOWING the truth that makes man free. Man gives a sense
of reality and power to evil when he fails to recognize that his
source, his life, his very existence through time and eternity is God
the Good. Truth must be recognized in order to be realized and to
become a power in the lives of men. Ignorance of the truth of his
Being does not alter man’s true nature, for the REALITY of
man never changes. Ignorance is the seeming great delusion of the
world. It unknowingly takes things for what they are not; that is, takes the
expression for the Expresser, the body for the source of Self, the
brain for the source of Mind, the letter for the Spirit and, in
general, causes a sense of disorder or disease. As students of science we start
with a new concept of man, an idea which may be new to our thought, but
which is eternal in Truth. As man understands that his true state, his
eternal nature, is perfect since he is one with his perfect Source, he
claims his own perfection as something innately his, implanted within
him by the divine Mind, not something which he has earned or which
comes to him from outside himself. As his vision enlarges, the
perfect unity between the Divine and all mankind is revealed to the
consciousness of man. He begins, dimly at first, to glimpse the truth
of his sonship; gradually he sees the everlasting nature of all things.
The divine nature can never be lost for it is an eternal truth, and
sooner or later everyone must awaken to its presence within him.
Eventually each one will be able to say, “I am because God
is, God is the reason or cause of my being, the source of my existence.
All that I am must be found in God, and most truly I cannot be
something that my source is not. My source decides my nature. The
stream is like the fountain from which it flows.” Jesus was quoting from the Old
testament when he gave but two commandments: “Thou shalt love
the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy might.” Deut. 6:5, and “ . . . thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself . . .” Lev. 19:18. These
commandments are fulfilled as man recognizes the perfect nature in all
creation. When we realize the oneness and divinity of Life in all
things we sense a universal justice, strength, and harmony back of all
creation which when understood will be expressed as love. Understanding
that the whole of Truth must be found in infinite Mind, we have a
standard by which to judge all things, a basis from which to reason of
Truth. We now turn from appearances and “judge righteous
judgment”; we decide what is true from our knowledge of an
omnipresent principle of Truth rather than from a personal opinion or
feeling. Whatever God is, is Truth. All Truth is eternal in nature:
true love can never change; true understanding cannot fail; true life
can never end. This is all true now. Conscious awareness of the Truth
and the opening of our hearts and minds to the acceptance of the
fullness within our own nature is our greatest need. All good, wisdom,
strength, life, health, love are ours now. Let us accept them. Begin each day with an
acknowledgment of omnipresent Good. Think of yourself as a son of God.
Think of your children, your friends, and all persons, not as they seem
by observation, but as they are in God. Think of
them as that which is, was, and ever shall be; as that which thinks and
knows; as that which the Expresser expresses perfectly. Know that what
is true of God is true of you and of them. From this standpoint you can
intelligently master the problems of life. From this standpoint it is
right for you to accept for yourself all thought and feelings of divine
love, truth, knowledge, power, harmony. By making this your daily
practice you will partake of the free gift of eternal life; you will be
remembering God the Good. Through this consciousness the healing of
body and affairs takes place and Good is made manifest. Divine Science Statement of Being God is all, both invisible and
visible. One Presence, One Mind, One
Power is all. This one that is all is perfect
life, perfect love, and perfect substance. Man is the individualized
expression of God and is ever one with this perfect life, perfect love,
and perfect substance. Statements of Truth God is omnipresent Principle. “Principle is the
source and origin, that from which anything proceeds; the
beginning, the first.” --Webster Man is a spiritual Being, the
image and likeness of God. Man is the perfect manifestation
of a perfect God. Man’s consciousness is
the activity of God-Mind. I live now by the life that is
omnipresent and full of power. In all that I do this day,
perfect Mind, ever active, Thinks me, moves me, lives me as
part of itself. I am immortal Spirit,
incorruptible, changeless, harmonious, strong In thought and body, living,
trusting, resting in the freedom And fullness of perfect Life. Questions for Review and
Discussion
Divine
Science Its Principle and Practice
Copyright 1957 by Divine Science Church
and College Denver,
Colorado Made available
here by the ministry of Rev. Lawrence C.
Terry, M.Msc., D.Min. P. O. Box 68324 Indianapolis, IN
46268-0324 |
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